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iHE FOX RIVER VALLEY IN THE DAYS OF 
THE FUR TRADE 



DEBORAH BEAUMONT MARTIN 



[ From Proceedings of The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, iSyi) ] 



, ^ V. . >[ADISON 

State Historical Society of Wisconsin 

1900 



The Fox River Valley in the Days of the 
Fur Trade 



BY 

DEBORAH BEAUMONT MARTIN 



[From Proceedings of The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1899] 



MADISON 

State Historical Society of Wisconsin 

1900 






G3521 



THE hOX RIVER VALLEY IN THE DAYS OE THE 
FUR trade; 



BY DEBORAH BEAUMONT MARTIN". 

When the embryo United States of America was comprised in 
a series of little isolated sea coast towns under English rule, 
and Xew France was the El Dorado of the rival power, one great 
dominating influence gave impetus to French exploration and 
discovery in the new^ world — the all embracing fur trade. It 
caught in its meshes Cardinal Richelieu, the controlling power 
in far-off France, and thereby shaped the foreign policy of a 
nation. The men of Canada in all degrees of life were more or 
less engaged in this enthralling pursuit; even the Jesuit priests 
were not exempt from the prevailing madness,^ and their 
donnes — the Canadian youth reared under priestly surveil- 
lance, to assist in the missions — carried the sanction of the 
church into their favorite occupation. 

Louis XIV., while greedy for the profits of this lucrative 
trade, realized too late its fatal results, the ruin that the all- 
pervading canker of lawless life and indifference to settled col- 
onization, had created in his great northwest dominion. He 
strove vainly to stem the tide that threatened to wreck his 
schemes for rulership in the western world f but England, %vell 
established by this time, strongly entrenched, and in league with 
the powerful Iroijuois confederacy, snapped her fingers at fu- 
tile efforts to dislodge her from her share of the beaver traffic. 

* Address delivered before the Wisconsin State Historical Convention, 
at Green Bay, September 6, 1899. 

^Parkman, Old Regime in Canada, p. 328. 
Uhid., p. 310. 



118 



WISCONSIN HISTOEICAL SOCIETY. 



The inevitable encounter came, and the fall of l!Tew France waa 
the result. 

The Fox River valley in very early days became a pivotal 
point towards which the voyageur, whether priest, explorer, or 
courier de hois, cast longing eyes. We regard Wisconsin in the 
seventeenth century as a vast and lonely wilderness, but it waa 
in reality a busy, populous Indian center, where hundreds of Al- 
gonkins, driven westward by their untiring enemy, the Iroquois, 
had found safe haven. Their wig-^vams, covered with puckawaj 
mats, clustered at desirable points along the waterways ; rude 
fortifications, like those seen formerly at Red Banks, crowned 
the heights ; while scores of dusky hands trapped the beaver and 
beautiful black otter, and fashioned the skins into clothing or 
curtains to hang before the door of the lodge. 

It is Father Vimont who writes, in 1643,^ that Jean JTicolet, 
interpreter for the Hundred Associates, had nine years previous 
penetrated farther westward than any other Frenchman; and 
then follows that curious relation of how Nicolet, bound for the 
China sea, sailed instead into our ova\ Green Bay, and beached 
his canoe upon the sandy shore of Fox River. Twenty years 
later Radisson and Groseilliers paddled their birch canoe up and 
down the winding rivers of Wisconsin, and Radisson's pen pic- 
ture of a Wisconsin winter in 1658,^ thrills the reader of today 
as i1i did the listener of 250 years ago when "there did fall such 
a quantity of snow and frost" weighting the great pine trees, that 
the forest was dark at noonday ; and shrunken by bitter cold and 
famine they did eat their own dogs, and the hides of the very 
peltries they had risked life to gain. 

The trading posts were at first merely encampments, the 
Frenchmen often taking possession of an Indian wigwam, or 
a corner of the great lodge; but soon, cabins surrounded by a 
strong stockade became a necessity, and superseded the more 
primitive style of dwelling. In these the courcur de hois stored 

'^Relations des Jesuites, 1643. 
^Wis. Hist. Colls., xi, p. 79. 



FOX EIVER FUR TRADE. 119 

his furs Tintil sncli time as he saw fit to return to the home col- 
ony. Sometimes, as at the De Peretapids, the mission house 
was combined with a trading poet, and formed a little knot of 
buildings. 

During the years between 1661 and 1694, the fur trader most 
closely identified with the Fox River valley was ^N^icolas Perrot, 
giver of the famous ostensorium to the Jesuit mission of St. 
Francis Xavier, at De Pere. He stands forth as Wisconsin's 
first governor, for in 16S5 he received a commission from De la 
Barre, governor of ^ew France, with absolute command from 
Baye des Puants to the Mississippi.^ It was necessary that a 
man be placed here with influence sufficient to muster an Indian 
army, with diplomacy to outwit the Ottawa envoys of the Eng- 
lish and endowed with a sort of desperate bravery such as "trav- 
ellers between life and death" w'ere forced to possess in those 
troublous times. Perrot's headquarters w^re at St. Francis 
Xavier, and here he gave audience to the Indians of the vicinity. 
His labors were varied and arduous. The Bay Indians were 
not navigators, except for short distances ; and when a campaign 
was on foot against the Iroquois, Perrot must not only arouse 
the war spirit of the braves to a proper pitch, but must also un- 
dertake the more difficult work of urging the squawks to the task 
of fashioning canoes for the expedition — the bark to be stripped 
from the trees, carefully shaped, sewed, and pitched. 

In contrast to the staunch Perrot, appears in our early history, 
at this period, the figure of a more typical coureur de hois, Grey- 
solon Du Luth, brave, reckless, unscrupulous, accused even of 
bargaining wdth the English when it was to his profit but ready 
to fight to the death for France, when at last, war was declared 
between the two nations. He descended upon the RecoUet 
Father Hennepin, in bondage to the Sioux Indians, like a ver« 
itable good Samaritan in buckskin suit and tasseled cap; took 
Hennepin under his powerful protection, and piloted him safely 

^Tailhan's Perrot. 



220 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

to the Green Bay post;^ but there thev parted company, for 
Du Luth was under ban for illicit fur trading, and powerful 
though he was in influence dared not risk the accumulated wrath 
of his government by a return to the home colony. 

In the decade between 1680-90 the English made desperate 
efforts to direct the beaver traffic to Albany, rather than Mon- 
treal, Xot so desirable as comrades, they were deemed better pay- 
masters than the French, and intercepting the fur fleets after 
they had left Michilimackinac, would by generous reward pre- 
vail on the occupants to barter away their valuable cargoes. 
This system of j^oaching on what the Frenchman considered 
his especial preserve, caused most bitter feeling between the gov- 
ernors of Xew France and Manhattan. 

In 1686, Marquis Denonville writes: "It is only necessary 
to ask you again, what length of time we occupy these posts and 
who discovered them — you or we ? Again, who is in possession 
of them ? Eead the fifth article of the treaty of neutrality, 
and you will see if you were justified in giving orders to estab-- 
lish your trade at Missilimaquina." 

Very cold and sarcastic is Governor Dongan's reply to this 
most "reflecting and provoking letter." "You tell me of your 
having had missionarys among them (the western Indians), itt is 
a very charitable act, but I am well assured gives no just right 
or title to the government of the Country— Father Bryare w^rites 
to a gent : that the King of China never goes anywhere without 
two Jesuits with him ; I wonder why you make not like pretence 
to that kindomc.'"- 

So the furious lettei^ passed to and fro until war, bitter, un- 
relenting, was the result. It is an interesting and involved 
study of cause and effect, this fur trade tangle in the seventeenth 
century, with Mackinac and the Green Bay waterway the goal 
of desire for two great nations ; and while "Peiter Schuyler took 
examinacons of ye antientesit traders In All)any how many 

^Hennepin's Xouvelle Deconverte, 1698. 
documentary History of Xeiv York, i, pp. 264, 270. 



FOX raVER FUR TRADE. 



121 



jeares agon they or any others had first traded with ye Indyans 
yt had ye Straws and Pipes thro' their noses and the ffarther 
Indyans,"^ iSTicolas Perrot, trusted emissary of ISFew France, was 
speeding his canoe toward these same "ffarther Indyans," only 
to find that in his absence the savages had burned the mission 
house at Rapides des Peres, and that his accumulated stock of 
valuable peltries, representing his entire fortune, was destroyed.^ 
Truly the lot of a fur-trading diplom^at was a difficult one. 

The years following, up to 1764, represent an interesting and 
thrilling period of Western history — the courageous and useless 
effort of the brave Fox nation to bar from white man's inva- 
sion the Fox-Wisconsin highway. A French fort was estab- 
lished at La Baye.^ In 1760 it was garrisoned by the English. 
Times were too troublous for the fur trade to make progress. 
War was on between France and England, in which the Indian 
took part. Still an ally of the French, he had been rendered 
treacherous by false promises, and no white man's scalp was 
■quite safe when a band of redskins was around. 

In 1745, Augustin de Langlade, long a trader at Mackinac, 
made bold to establish a post at Green Bay.^ It was the earli- 
-est decided effort at colonization— hardly that, at first, for Lang- 
lade's family remained at Mackinac; not until 1763 did he 
with his son Charles make La Baye their permanent home. 
And now begins the period of Acadian life in Green Bay's 
history. Snug little log houses sprang up along the river bank, 
with neat gardens attached, filled with all sorts of succulent 
products. Corn was the staple, while the bringing of the first 
^pple tree by Madame Amable Roy, was an event worthy of 
chronicle. ' Until within very recent years the ridges of these 
extensive cornfields furrowed the commons surrounding Green 
Bav. A simple, kindly gayety permeated the habitant's life — 

^Documentary History of Neiv Yo7-k, i, pp. 264, 270. . 

= La Potherie; also, Hebbard's Wisconsin iinder French Dominion. 

^Charlevoix's Historic de la X. France, v, 432 

*"Grignon's Recollections,'" Wis. Hist. Colls., iii. 



]^22 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

the fiddle and the bow held swa)- at social gatherings, and the 
Indians, at peace with their Canadian neighbors, became their 
servants to fetch and carry, and to bring provender from forest 
and river. 

There were no religions services held here, except by some 
visiting priest; the little children, we are told, were taken a 
canoe voyage to Mackinac to be baptized and then the legend re* 
mains of a large white cross erected on the west side of the river^ 
by an itinerant missionary, w^here the people would gather at 
stated intervals to say their prayers. 

Charles de Langlade acted as magistrate and law giver, and 
under his rnle such pleasures as May Day dances around a 
flower-decked pole were in vogue.^ After Judge Reaume mi- 
grated to Green Bay, marriage contracts were made out in due 
form, with many witnesses to attest their validity, and an after- 
touch of feasting and jollity. 

One subject of absorbing interest dominated the French Cre- 
ole's life, and seems to form the sole incentive to letter writing 
in these primitive times — the fur trade, always the fur trade. 
its ebb and its flow. The event of the year was the coming of 
the voyageurs from far Montreal, in the autumn, when the hab- 
itants would gather on the sand-point below Charles de Lang- 
lade's house, where the electric power house stands today, to 
watch the batteaux sweep in from the bay. Amidships sat the 
manager of the expedition, an autocrat ^Vhose word was law, 
while the crew formed in their gay toggery a bit of vivid color 
seen from far away. The paddles struck the water in sharp 
and perfect time to the song that rose and fell — of how Michel 
climbed a tree and fell down, or of two cavaliers who journeyed 
in company, one on foot and the other on horseback — the chorus 
endless in repetition, unmeaning to our prosaic minds, but the 
music, with its wild thrilling cadences, w^ould charm the heart out 
of the listener and make the tears start. It was the air to which 
was sung the couplet describing the two cavaliers, ambitious to 
^"Grignon's Recollections." 



FOX KlYEU FUR TRADE. 123 

see life, that captivaTed Tom Moore, the poet, and inspired the 
"Canadian Boat Song," so familiar in the early half of the pres- 
ent century : 

"Row, brothers, row; the stream runs fast, 
The rapids are near, and the daylight is past." 

John Jacob Astor and his Southwest Company had early in 
the century begun operations in Green Bay.-^ The Astor com- 
pany dovetailed into the customs of the habitants, as though to 
the manner born. Ramsay Crooks, Wilson P. Hunt, and Robert 
Stuart were veterans along fur-trading lines, and were hand-and- 
glove with John Lawe, the extensive Grignon connection, and the 
Porliers, 

The War of 1812 parts like a wedge this happy, careless ex- 
istence from the period of American colonization. The traders 
hurried their goods to Canada, and Astor wrote Jacob Franks in 
1810 that trade threatened to be entirely ruined." The ensuing 
four years meant hard sledding indeed, for the Green Bay habi- 
tant. The royalists levied on everything available to support 
life, soldiers were quartered on property that met with their ap- 
proval, and when peace was declared the dwellers in the Fox 
River valley cared little which government came into power. 

There was considerable friction at first, for American methods 
were directly opposed to English rule ; but again the fur trade, 
Green Bay's staple industry, revived, and the long black pointed 
batteaux of the American Fur Co., — for Astor had thus rechris- 
tened his monopoly,^ — once more ]>lied between Mackinac and 
the Bay. 

The American government, however, did not propose to allow 
the profits of the fur trade to be swallowed up by a private cor- 
poration. Accordingly, an agent or factor was placed at Fort 
Howard, with instructions to divert at least a portion of the 
trade into the government coffers. It is amusing to run over 

^Wis. Hist. Colls., ii, p. 101. 
''Historic Green Bay, p. 138. 
'Turner's "Fur Trade in Wisconsin," Proc. Wis. His. Soc, 1889. 



124 



WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



the official records and note how the well-meant efforts of this 
unfortunate deputy, Maj. Matthew Irwin, were frustrated by. 
the crafty resident traders ; but it was a serious matter at the 
time, and has gone into no less an authority than the American 
State Papers. Major Irwin lured the Indians by every known 
method. They accepted his gewgaw presents, they partook of 
his good cheer, they brought him hundreds of mococks of maple 
sugar which he feared to offend them l)y refusing, but not a 
beaver, otter, or raccoon skin would they fetch to his door, not 
even the red deer, unprized though it was by the fur company. 
In 1815, the amount of merchandise sent to the factory was 
$15,784.44. JSTot a single skin was brought in that year; the 
following season not quite so large a stock of goods, and only 
muskrat hides to show for it ; and so on, until the factory was 
discontinued in 1819. One of the best documents of the time is 
a report hj that Trojan among fur traders, Ramsay Crooks,^ con- 
cerning the government factory svstem, for the furious charges 
made by Major Irwin brought about official investigation of fur- 
trading methods at Green Bay. Crooks points out that the factor 
rarely meets the Indians, except during the process of barter, 
and, protected by a garrison, has nothing. to apprehend from their 
dislike or resentment ; while the private trader, constantly in the 
power of the aborigines, becomes identified with the tribe he 
traffics with. He adds that "the factories have been furnished 
with goods of a kind not suitable to the Indians, unless the 
Coimnittee should be of opinion that men and women's coarse 
and fine shoes, worsted and cotton hose, tea, Glauber salts, alum 
and antibilious pills are necessary to promote the comfort or 
restore the health of the Aboriginees ; or gi-een silk fancy ribands, 
and morocco slippers are indispensable to eke out the dress of 
our i-ed sisters." 

It was not only in fur trading circles that the American occu- 
pation worked up a terril)lo muddle. Creole holders of real es- 

^Amer. State Papers, Indian Affairs, ii, p. 329. 



FOX RIVER FUR TRADE. ^25 

tate were threatened with the confiscation of their property,^ 
w'hile in the iirst U. S. court," Judge Doty, hy his initial decree 
annulling marriages solemnized according to the Indian custom, 
bid fair to uproot family ties, and cause a general social up- 
heaval. 

The letters of the fur traders at this period reflect a decided 
tightness in the money market. One of the head merchants 
complains that times are so hard he has no money to buy wine, 
and has "even been oblig'd to dispense with whiskey and suffice 
myself Avith humble St. Terrance (water) not that it satisfies 
me."^ Another, giving orders to his deputy at one of the jack- 
knife trading posts, lays down this general rule : "Mix your 
"vVhiskey half and half to give away ; for sale one third water will 
be sufficient. Give no credit ; if done at all, it must be with 
great caution." 

At the Grand Kakalin, Augustin Grignon exercised patriar- 
chal rule, at the same time carrying on large trading interests; 
and at the same place was the trading house of Colonel Du- 
charme, that gallant figaire in Creole tradition. So proud was the 
Colonel, that when he stepped forth dressed in his English uni- 
form the liahitants would whisper to one another with sly winks 
and nudges, "He thinks no doubt to open St. Peter's gate with 
that grand air, and the words, "I am Col. Ducharme.' " 

The John Lawe trading house was still the center of Indian 
traffic at Green Bay, the business a marvel of intricate bargain 
and sale ; and it is interesting to note that during Lawe's fre- 
•quent absences at Indian payments or on journeys eastward, his 
daughter, Rachel Lawe, managed the extensive business to the en- 
tire satisfaction of its head. Judge Lawe would write minute 
and complicated directions, which he designated as "merely a 
guide," and Rachel, clever girl that she was, would carry them 
out to the letter.^ 

^Amer. State Papers, Public Lands, iv. 

-Address of Hon. M. L. Martin before State Hist. Sac, 1851. 
^'MS. Leiter of Jacob Franks to John Lawe. May, 1822. 
"MS. "Memorandum for Miss Racliel Lawe." 



]^26 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

A serioTis question for discussion in fur trading circles was 
how to control the unmanageable engagee, that irresponsible, im- 
provident rogue; and in 1832 Robert Stuart wrote to Morgan 
L. Martin, at that time a member of the Michigan legislature,, 
asking that he introduce a bill to have the whipping post revived,- 
especially for the drubbing of these refractory servants.-^ 

By 1824, a new element had coane into Canadian life at 
La Baye. The families of Irwin, Baird, and Whitney, well- 
born and well-bred, brought Eastern refinements into the fron- 
tier town, yet identified themselves in a social way with the 
French pioneers. Fort Howard had become an important fea- 
ture in Green Bay annals, and adds another touch of color to 
the fascinating and varied picture of life in the twenties. The 
military officers were here today and gone tomorrow ; but while 
they stayed they "made things hum" in old Green Baj^, and 
when an epidemic of small pox threatened the little village, and 
Fort Howard insisted on quarantine, consternation was deep and 
general. Every one seems to have been young, in those bright 
days., If there was old age, its shadow is not reflected in the- 
reoords of the time. It was all life and enthusiasm, the begin- 
nings of things in our State. An instance of the prevailing 
youth among prominent men of the time is shown in the fact 
that Judge Doty was only twenty-three years old when he pre- 
sided at his first term of court in Mackinac. 

In 1834 Astor retired on his millions, leaving to Green Bay 
hundreds of acres of unproductive lands, the property of the 
American Fur Company. The frequent call made through fur 
traders' letters for loans, sometimes for hundreds, sometimes for 
larger amounts, had met quick response from the company, un- 
til gradually the great monopoly swallowed up the bulk of lands 
owned by pioneer traders. The fur trade, with its easy profits, 
exercised the same malign influence in the nineteenth as in the 
seventeenth century. It paralyzed other industries. The 
profits grew less yearly, the business more diffused. The trad- 
^Historic Oreen Bay, p. 269. 



FOX RIVER FUR TRADE. 127 

ing house interfered with the country store to such an extent 
that the merchants complained of unequal competition, and more 
or less every store in Green Bay traded in peltries and made 
what profit they could in the sale of furs. 

The Fox River valley, in the days of the fur trade, was a 
different world from the Fox River valley of today ; and, in run- 
ning over the manuscripts of those days we live in a past that 
■could never hy any possibility he revived. A life where ease 
and comfort counted for more than the accumulation of wealth, 
it was by no means the idle, care-free existence that the hustler 
of today regards it. The fur-trader's interests were as far 
reaching as those of any modern capitalist ; his corps of un- 
derlings as carefully trained to their work as experts of the 
present time ; profit and loss were as minutely noted ; but it 
was a business that fluctuated with the season and that was cer- 
tain to decrease with the passing years. While it brought Green 
Bay into prominence, it weighted her with old fur-trading tradi- 
tions and methods of doing business, and the tide of enterprise 
and imodern industries failed to get footing here as promptly 
as in Oshkosh and oilier cities in the Fox River valley. It 
reached the gate to the Fox-Wisconsin highway in due time, 
however ; and when the great bare Astor warehouse, where the 
laden boats discharged their cargoes in the old days, burned some 
twenty years ago, the flames swept away almost the last remain- 
ing vestige of a power that influenced above all else the early 
iiistorv of Green Bav and the Fox River vallev. 



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